OS/2 e-Zine! - The Graham Utilities v2

The Graham Utilities v2 - by Jurgen Assfalg and Andrea Resmini

editor's note: The following article originally appeared in Italian in the on-line OS/2 magazine, Just WARP!. It was translated to English by Andrea Resmini.

Graham Utilities Packaging Many people who started working with personal computers more than a couple of years ago know who Peter Norton is. Most surely they know Mr. Norton because of his famous "Norton Utilities".

The suite of utilities we looked at this month draws at least inspiration from the works of Mr. Norton, only 'Peter' this time is an Australian guy who goes by the name of Chris Graham and who, when OS/2 1.2 was released, felt he couldn't work safely without the tools he had become used to when working with DOS. Of course, he couldn't find anything of that sort which was OS/2 native, so he decided to do some programming himself. The Graham Utilities were born.

Mr. Graham's noble effort produced a suite of system utilities which should not be overlooked or underestimated. Analogies with Peter Norton's work go so far as to having not only a similar way of functioning, but also a resemblance in utility names: just substitute 'Norton' with 'Graham' and you have it. If, in DOS, you had 'Norton Something', you most likely have 'Graham Something' in OS/2.

Packaging and Documentation

Graham Utilities come in three different flavours:

Floppy disks & hard copy manual
CD-ROM only
CD-ROM & hard copy manual

The latter version is the one we tested.

The box has a standard PC game box size, and contains one CD-ROM and a 400 page hard copy manual describing, with plenty of details, all the programs included in the Utilities. The Appendix has two interesting chapters devoted to an introduction to the HPFS file system and OS/2 extended attributes, arcane matters on which light is cast for both newcomers and old OS/2 hackers.

Those who go for the CD-ROM only version have at least three possibilities to choose from, since all the docs are included in PDF, PostScript and HTML format. Even if one doesn't have a PC with the Adobe Acrobat Reader or GhostView installed to take a glimpse at the first two, nearly everyone has a WWW browser on his or her PC. If you are reading this, you can read the Graham Utilities HTML documentation.

A floppy disk is also included in the package which should be used during installation to back up important information about the user's hard disk(s). This is a nice plus which avoids floppy safari hunts on the user's side; just unpack and start using the Utilities.

Installation

As soon as the install program is started (the file is called INSTALL.CMD and can be found in the root directory) even the inattentive among us will notice something quite peculiar: six different versions of the Graham Utilities have found their way onto the disc. Each of them has been optimized for a specific CPU class, from 286 to Pentium, and one is ready to run on PowerPCs.

J:\
J:\286
J:\286NT
J:\386
J:\486
J:\586
J:\603

Once a CPU type has been selected and source and target directory are set, the install routine installs the various utilities and optionally creates a Desktop folder (GIF, 16.9k) containing all of the program objects.

Finally, the install routine backs up data related to the user's system hard disk(s) partitioning by means of the Recovery Disk. Although this is precisely what that disk is included for, it is strongly recommended to make a spare copy, since the floppy also contains crash-recovery programs to use when in dire need.

There seems to be a slip in the installation procedure which one needs to be aware of: if one specifies a non-floppy source (for example a CD-ROM drive) these sensitive data do not get copied (trying to write on the CD, maybe?). However, it is possible to back them up manually using SAVEPART (with RESTPART to be used if the need arises to restore information about damaged partitions).

The Collection

There are more than sixty programs in the Graham Utilities v2.0; we will take a peek here and there, since a detailed description of all of them would be impossible or tedious. Lining them up has led to a few categories:

BE - batch enhancer This program allows the user to enrich his or her batch files with interesting and configurable features. Most useful are those functions of the Batch Enhancer which are related to semaphores; it is possible to enjoy the pleasures of multitasking even in this simplest form of programming. Using semaphore calls like SEMCLOSE, SEMCLEAR, SEMSET, SEMWAIT, SEMKILL, and SEMLIST), more than one batch procedure may access shared resources at a given time in an orderly fashion.

EA - extended attributes A second group represents those programs (EABackup, EABind, EADump, EARestor) which are able to manage one of the peculiar characteristics of the OS/2 file system, extended attributes: with these the user can visualize in detail and modify, if necessary, the extended attributes of any file. The two programs which are responsible for backing up and restoring EAs allow the use of wildcards (*. ?), as opposed to OS/2's own EAUtil.

For those still inexperienced in the ways of EAs, the manual sports a brief but good appendix to introduce you to the subject.

FAT or HPFS?

A whole slew of utilities are provided for maintaining the user's storage devices, both HPFS and FAT formatted. These are FAT-Bad, FAT-Dfrg, FAT-Ext, FAT-Info, FAT-Null, FAT-UD, FAT-View for FAT, and HPFS-Bad, HPFS-Ext, HPFS-UD (GIF, 14.6k), HPFSDfrg, HPFSInfo (GIF, 9.4k), HPFSNull, HPFSStat, HPFSView for HPFS disks (quite obviously).

Using these utilities, most hard disk related operations can be carried out successfully: data reading, recovering of erased files, disk defragmenting, data wiping. A full set of switches is provided to guarantee a high degree of customization.

For example, HPFS-ext -- just like its brother, FAT-ext -- reports the fragmentation status of files:

[F:\Products\Team\JustWarp!\gu20artic]hpfs-ext
[HPFS-Ext, V2.00 - 31/08/96 - (C) Chris Graham - WarpSpeed Computers]

Press ESC to abort at next file.

Searching Drive F:
F:\Products\Team\JustWarp!\gu20artic\folder4.gif Comprises 2 extents.
F:\Products\Team\JustWarp!\gu20artic\gi.gif Comprises 1 extent.
F:\Products\Team\JustWarp!\gu20artic\gu-box.gif Comprises 1 extent.
F:\Products\Team\JustWarp!\gu20artic\GU20artic.htm Comprises 4 extents.

[F:\Products\Team\JustWarp!\gu20artic]

HPFSDfrg (or FAT-Dfrg) reduces fragmentation of files:

[F:\Products\Team\JustWarp!\gu20artic]hpfsdfrg gu20artic.htm
[HPFSDfrg, V2.00 - 31/08/96 - (C) Chris Graham - WarpSpeed Computers]

Attempting to optimize files with greater than 2 extents.

Press ESC to abort at next file.

Searching Drive F:
F:\Products\Team\JustWarp!\gu20artic\GU20artic.htm Comprises 4 extents.  Optimize
d to 2 extents.

[F:\Products\Team\JustWarp!\gu20artic]

HPFSView (GIF, 14k) or FATView analyze a whole disk.

Particular care has been placed on preventing careless or unskilled users from damaging their systems. For example, FAT-Null (which fills all free clusters with zeros) requires a drive letter explicitly stated, while other tools default to the current disk. The documentation also clearly explains the use of all the Utilities (saying if each locks the drive, for example). This comforted and reassured us.

It's Not Over Yet...

Other oldies but goodies can also be found in this new version of the Graham Utilities: FF, SI, GCD (a close relative of NCD) and more.

Encoders/decoders (UUDecode, UUEncode, XXDecode, XXEncode, MIDecode, MIEncode) are included, as well as converters to and from UNIX formats (FromUnix, ToUnix) which take care of the different LineFeed/CarriageReturn methods of terminating a file.

Possibly you can find free programs to handle these conversions, but it's a convenience for the user not to have to roam the Internet or some BBS to find them. With the Graham Utilities, he or she will also get a consistent set of switches and parameters throughout all the programs, which is not easy to obtain if you collect tools from different sources.

Also worth mention is a simple GREP utility that the author is going to develop further in future releases.

Using Graham Utilities

Today, in times of sophisticated GUI (Graphical User Interface), a text/command line interface could easily be discarded as obsolete. But this solution has advantages in terms of runtime speed, possibility of use on older systems, remote use (via telnet, RCSH) and WPS independency. Think about recovering from a WPS-trashing crash, for example.

Those who prefer an overall interface or who have a dislike for command line switches can make a move to the Graham Integrator (GI) (GIF, 11.2k), a simple shell which acts as a program loader for the Utilities and which shows possible parameters for each program. Every Utility has a brief command line help, and interactive programs access their help system via hot-keys (usually F1).

What if the user is no computer genius?

Well, 'read your manual well' is an old saying but a wise one; if there is a system administrator, probably he or she can lend a serviceable hand. If the Utilities are to be used on a networked computer, many of them accept the workstation name as a parameter and can be run from the server.

Wish List

Although Chris Graham was not shooting at WPS integration with this version of the Utilities, a little effort in this direction would have been appreciated. Some of the Utilities, those which encode/decode for example, would benefit from being able to open data files by drag and drop to their object, and this would be a mere matter of parameters in the programs' settings notebooks.

Support

Users are supported via WWW, Telnet, Gopher, FTP and e-mail (on fidonet, the Internet and CompuServe). Future updates may be obtained using the Retrieve Software Updates facility.

A final Word

The Graham Utilities v2.0 are an interesting product, regardless of the text interface; the wide range of functions they are able to perform almost covers the entirety of operations required for managing an OS/2 system.

Great emphasis has been placed on the flexibility and possibility for customization of the programs; many of them can be piped or redirected to other Utilities to carry out complex tasks. This may be an outdated way of working, but it is a powerful and sure-footed one. (Program output can be redirected for example to CLIPBRD, a tool which copies it into the system clipboard to be viewable from all PM applications.)

The Graham Utilities are a valid solution for both the professional power user and the hobbyist who wants to keep his or her system in good shape.

Graham Utilities v2.0
by WarpSpeed Computers
MSRP: US$69.00 (CD-ROM & Manual)

Jurgen Assfalg is an electronics engineering student, now working on 3D graphics and VR systems to implement innovative user interfaces. He chose OS/2 because its WPS is still one of the most advanced GUIs.

Andrea Resmini is an architect and a staff member at the Faculty of Architecture of Milan, Italy. He studies GUIs and the human/computer interface and occasionally shows his broken English in lands both near and far.

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